The memoir of Blue Van Meer, the protagonist of the story, centralizes around her relationship and near- obsession with her father. Despite that a significant portion of the story focuses on her high school senior year, all incidents in her quite eventful life comes secondary to the encompassing presence of her father’s influence in her thoughts and actions. Blue is portrayed to think very highly of him and never fails to quote him, or his teachings in every aspect of her life. However, as if almost as unexpectedly to her, as to the reader, she comes face-to-face with situations where she sees her father under a very different light and finds herself on the opposite end of the emotional spectrum than is typical of herfrom what she is used to. This not only hints at plot twists, but also casts a shadow on the seemingly transparent relationship of the two main characters.
Blue has spent most almost all of her senior year weekends at Hannah’s house, lying to her father about a so-called study group, even updating him time to time of their progress. But, after she came home from her high school Christmas Cabaret, she gets into a confrontation with him where he lets her know with a demeanor “calm as the Dead Sea” (234), that he had known of her deceit all along. This was for the first time he explicitly encounters her and states to bethat he is disappointed in her. It was undoubtedly a moment of shocking revelation to Blue, her nightmare of disappointing her father coming true; yet, she remains as observant as ever. She casts her father in a negative light describing him as of being “supremely arrogant and unapologetic (see “Picasso enjoying the fine weather in the South of France,” Respecting the Devil, Hearst, 1984, p.120 ).”, comprehensive with her references and an inescapable influence of the readings and education orchestrated by her father.
However, the climax of the passage reaches a climax with the shockingly frigid reaction Blue has to her father’s verdict on moving to another town, disregarding her fragile protests. There was no pretense or, elaborate figure of speech tagging along with her reaction, as characteristically expected of Blue. The simplicity of her thoughts was enough to create an